
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 31, 1995                   TAG: 9501310151
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE                                LENGTH: Short

MARTINSVILLE MUSEUM GETS $25,850 GRANT

The National Geographic Society has given the Virginia Museum of Natural History a $25,850 grant to excavate a site containing whale fossils that are 12 million years old.

Scientists said the Caroline County site offers a rare chance to answer questions about the massive mammals' evolution. They expect to find the skeletons of at least 20 whales.

``We just don't know what we're going to find. But we do know anywhere we put a pick in, we hit bone,'' said Nick Fraser, the Martinsville museum's curator of vertebrate paleontology.

Fraser and Lauck W. Ward, the museum's curator of invertebrate paleontology, will lead a team of scientists in the two-year excavation, which is to begin this spring.

- Associated Press

by CNB